1819 May 18 C

Disfranchising

Disfranchising

§.5. Evil 4. Multiplying Country Members

17

13

9

{4}

they must expect to be ript[?] open if they talk as they do

Anti-Reformist – And if you had the power, would it then be your wish and your endeavour to exclude Country Gentlemen /the class of those in question/ from the House?

Reformist Not more than it would be yours. In regard to men of that class, as in regard to men of all classes my wish is {and my endeavour would be so to order matters} that finding themselves under an inability to sacrifice the universal interest to their personal and other partial interests, they should confine their endeavours to the advancement of that interest of theirs which consists in each mans share in the universal interest. So much as to probity: and that, finding himself by the merits of those whose studies and occupations had been directed to the qualifying themselves for the due /their intellectual faculties for the apt/ discharge of the duties of their situation excluded from that share of power which his property might otherwise have enabled him to attain the ignorant and inapt father should by appropriate /an apt/ course of instruction /education/ to make provision for stocking with appropriate and useful matter the vacuities which experience had rendered him sensible of in his own mind. So much for intellectual aptitude.

In a word the worst that /all that/ I wish is – leaving the class itself in possession of that share of power which by the mere influence of understanding on understanding would without any of that sinister influence which is exercised by will on will, adhere /cleave[?]/ to it so long as the property itself adhered to it – in this same class of men to individuals uniting the possessing appropriate aptitude in no shape to substitute other or even the same individuals possessing that same appropriate aptitude in every shape.

General propositions have, as such, their exceptions. In this case, whoever chooses to make himself an exception, is so.